The need for protecting the cargo beds of pickups, delivery trucks, vans, and other vehicles from impacts, abrasions, and other damage has been long recognized. Indeed, since the advent of trucks with cargo beds, proposals have existed for attempting to protect truck beds from the wear and tear inherent in the truck's capacity as a service vehicle. Rudimentary solutions have been proposed, such as lining the cargo bed with strips or sheets of wood. In later years, unitary or multi-component polymeric liners were provided and were often specially configured for particular cargo bed shapes. Still further, spray-on cargo bed liners have been taught wherein a thick and durable coating is sprayed directly onto the surfaces of the cargo bed.
While the foregoing methods advantageously provide some level of protection, each suffers from known disadvantages. For instance, ad hoc wood liners often lack a finished, professional appearance and are highly vulnerable to damage. Pre-formed polymeric liners must typically be individually designed and formed for each distinct cargo bed shape, and such liners are markedly difficult to transport and store and are prone to cracking and warping. Spray-on cargo bed liners can develop rips, punctures, or tears or can bubble or fade thereby necessitating removal, which is difficult in view of the liner being directly affixed to the cargo bed itself. Moreover, spray-on liners provide minimal impact protection and, as competitive advertising has recently shown, readily transmit impacts and damage directly to the cargo bed itself. Neither the foregoing nor any other known truck bed liner provides a significant impact barrier to the factory cargo bed. Furthermore, prior art cargo bed liners often produce their own deleterious effects on the cargo bed, such as by ongoing abrasion and fastening and adhesion requirements.
Beyond the foregoing, cargo bed liners of the prior art typically lack sufficient attachment locations to permit versatile and effective tie-down operations. To the extent tie-down locations are accessible at all, they are often quite limited and in fixed locations not necessarily convenient, effective, or sufficiently versatile for restraining particular articles of cargo and multiple, varied items simultaneously. Moreover, with many known cargo bed liners, tie-down mechanisms are not available over the surface of the floor of the cargo bed itself where the greatest hold-down strength is often required. Indeed, spray-on coatings and drop-in synthetic bed liners simply do not allow for a large variety of tie-down options to the bed of the cargo area. Most offer no tie-down options to the cargo bed whatsoever.
Factory-provided tie-down apertures and other securing mechanisms are commonly elevated from the floor of the cargo bed to a height that prevents the application of a securing force in a vertically downward direction from a location at or near the surface of the cargo bed. With that, adequate load retention is compromised, particularly in relation to cargo that has a height below or marginally above the height of the factory-provided securing mechanisms.
It is, therefore, apparent that there remains a need in the art for a liner structure for the cargo beds of vehicles that can effectively protect the cargo bed from impact and abrasion damage while enabling stable and secure cargo retention in a readily adaptable and convenient manner.